


Boarding Mishaps

by Snailcomicz



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Customized Exile, Damaged Prosthetic, Gen, Minor Injuries, Missing Scene, Temporary Poisoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 05:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20402680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snailcomicz/pseuds/Snailcomicz
Summary: Missing scene/character study about the parts you don't see while you're off fighting the people who took over your ship





	Boarding Mishaps

**Author's Note:**

> How did Visas Marr manage to incapacitate all the members of the Hawk's crew? Why was Atton the one who talked to you in the medbay?

The Ebon Hawk’s ramp eased down with only a little complaining.

“With how tense things are here, as soon as I unload this chassis we’ll turn around and finish clearing out the crystal caves.” Gladiolus said as she flicked her black and bleached bun extension over her shoulder, making a beeline for the busted HK unit in the small storage unit. “Go ahead and check on anything you’ll-”

“Excuse me, Gladiolus.” The Disciple said, pulling out a blinking data pad and splitting off towards the medbay. Atton rolled his eyes at the newcomer’s spring-butt need to show competence.

“-Need.” She waved the newbie off amicably without looking back, light brown eyes evaluating how she was going to replace the droids’ chassis. “You can check the Hawk’s system if you need to Atton, this isn’t going to be too exciting.”

Atton leaned on the doorway and smirked. “Oh, so you don’t trust the trash compactor either?”

“I didn’t say that!” He laughed as she whirled around and shoved him out of the doorframe and partway down the cockpits’ hallway. “Blocked, banned, banished, no anti-droid resentments allowed in my workspace, I’ll see you in less than half a standard hour.”

In the cockpit, everything was still in order. The most of the vital systems were blinking the right color, and the known issues hadn’t noticeably deteriorated. They’d only been planetside for a day or so, and the check wasn’t really necessary. The Exile mentioned it, however, and she had enough to worry about with everyone on Dantooine insisting she fix their problems and Peragus still hanging over her head.

His eyes finally caught a new alert and he leaned a little closer the side screen. That… Wasn’t great, actually. One of the port fuselage connectors had gone offline while they were out, and he probably needed to fix that before the Jedi finished her repairs. Only issue was, the fuselage connector was in the room Kreia had claimed for herself.

Looked like ‘Operation: Avoid Kreia outside of missions’ was _already_ a bust.

With a beleaguered sigh he hoisted himself off the chair and walked back through the ship, taking the opportunity to sneak a peek at the Exile as she hoisted the broken chassis to a more convenient spot (purely out of respect for her natural strength, of course, no matter how great her arms were), before bracing himself and entering Kreia’s room.

Kreia’s room, which was much more crowded than usual.

The so called ‘Historian’ seemed to be in a serious argument with the old witch, quiet voice insisting that something on the data pad he was using was a bigger health concern than Kreia understood. Kreia was handling that about as well as you’d expect from knowing her for longer than two seconds. The Ghost-Lady who smuggled their ship was drumming her fingers on the floor while ignoring the argument, and even Bao-Dur had propped open part of the wall while both his Remote and T3 beeped at him. How that man could stand droids, he didn’t understand, but the three of them were probably handling the problem the Hawk had notified him about, so he simply turned around and made for the door.

The closed door.

The door he hadn’t closed, in the room where everyone _except_ the Exile had been called into at this very moment.

“Nobody move.” Atton said, his gut giving out a warning far too late.

“What?” The Disciple asked, while the Handmaiden immediately retorted, “If that’s a threat, know I can take you.”

“No, I- Watch for mines.” He stared directly at his feet and shifted just enough to look at the others while keeping an eye on the door, gut screaming when he hit the open command and nothing happened. “Bao-Dur, why are you here?”

“Mines? There’s a fuselage connector that went offline, I needed to fix-” Bao-Dur pulled himself away from his work far too slowly for Atton’s comfort, but seemed to catch on to what Atton was saying as he scanned the room. Slowly he finished, “-it. Why is everyone else here?”

“I am always here, it is you who have invaded my space.” Kreia growled, haughtily snapping her robes sleeves out before folding her arms in front of her.

“The Exile texted me on the com, asking me to come here to help her after she mended the broken Droid.” The Handmaiden said, disregarding his warning about mines to get up and step closer to him, raising an eyebrow. “Why are _you_ here, Atton?”

“Alright I-” He huffed a humorless laugh and pointed at her. “I get it, you don’t trust me, I don’t trust you, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this an-”

The panel flashed a command too fast for him to read, and the door opened just long enough for a grenade to sail through the opening.

Atton threw himself to the ground, instincts drilled into him from over a decade ago activating automatically. The grenade started hissing instead of exploding, meaning it was poison, not shrapnel. He drew in a deep breath, held it and scrambled back to the door panel as green gas started spewing from the center of the room. The others were in varying states of reaction, with the Newbie reeling to the back of the room (useless, you couldn’t outrun the gas in these tight quarters), Ghost Girl trying to brute force the doors open (impossible thanks to the airlock, but at least she wasn’t trying to push him away from the panel in her panic), and Ol’ Witchy starting at the grenade in either outright shock or unfazed acceptance (because of course she couldn’t use the Force to help, jerk Jedi). He didn’t dare glance back to see how Bao-Dur was holding up, frantically trying to get the unresponsive door to open back up and let clean air in and him out. Call him a coward, but as long as one of the got out and warned ‘Lus they could regroup, and until then they were no better than a drowning del’cashi. 

He grabbed a computer spike from his boot and opening the casing, lungs burning for air. Bao-Dur was trying to tell him something, wasting his breath and insuring he’d pass out before he finished his thought. Atton shook his head and ignored him, focusing on using the spike to get through the frozen console. When the Handmaiden slumped at the door beside him his brain helpfully reminded him if she was out, he was likely the last one standing.

He finally got to the part of the code he needed just as his lungs betrayed him, giving him only enough time to pull the flap of his shirt over his mouth before he coughed and inhaled.

His eyes started watering at the sharp snap of the poisoned air, one breath already feeling too close to choking for comfort.

He fell to a knee as he tried to suppress his coughs, hands scrambling to work the console.

He had to get out, warn someone,

Save himself,

Breathe-

* * *

Atton had dragged himself on hands and knees just outside the door frame before his awareness fully caught up with him.

The air outside the room looked clear, even as the rasp in his lungs reminded him of what had happened. He stumbled to his feet and jammed one of his antidote packs into his thigh, hating the vice grip around his throat more than he cared about wasting a pack. He still had a few more in his various pockets, and if he was going to make it to Gladiolus he needed to be quieter than the poison would let him be.

(Is the partial lie he told himself, as removing the choking feeling also helped chase away ghosts he had been running from for years, and certainly didn’t want to face now.)

Activating his stealth field generator and keeping close to the walls, he scanned the hallway for signs of whoever the intruder had been. Now free of his own labored breathing, his ears picked up on someone past the medbay wheezing painfully, and distinctly didn’t hear the Exile making repairs. Sneaking down the hallway as fast as he dared, he allowed himself the bitter thought of using a poison grenade on their intruder, give them a taste of their own medicine.

Those thoughts were cut short when he recognized the voice that hissed out a swear as the woman he was looking for, rather than their intruder. Grabbing his blasters but moving his hands away from his grenades, he rounded the corner in the hallway.

Gladiolus was slumped, injured but alive, next to an unconscious person wearing too much stylized black and red to be anything but Sith. The busted lightsaber in the Exile’s hand proved it, as she had been bothering Bao-Dur every time they got new materials that might be needed for building a lightsaber, and they were still missing some part or another. Just a quick look over the seemingly victorious Jedi had him turning off his belt and getting her attention.

“Gladiolus?”

She flung herself back into a combat stance, weight entirely on one leg and trying to activate the lightsaber. It almost coughed, sparks flying dangerously close to her robes, even as recognition and relief seemed to slap her across the face.

“Atton? Oh, thank the Force.”

In a word, she looked bad. The now busted lightsaber in her hand must have been working before, as its acidic smell hung in the air and her robes were frayed in that way even blaster fire couldn’t exactly replicate. She gingerly touched her nose, and the hint of the two black eyes that would develop on someone who wasn’t going to magic the bruises away were there. Her weight remained entirely on one leg, and from the melted slag where part of her foot should have been it was clear to see why. Her shoe seemed to have provided no protection for her prosthetic foot, as a long melted line ran through it and it clearly wasn’t holding her weight anymore. He moved to support her, looping her arm over his head and slowly walking forward.

“We need to get you to the medbay.”

“What about the others? No, first, are you alright? All of you nearly scared me to death finding-” She shook her head and huffed out a pained breath, letting him know the intruder had gotten in a body blow at some point in the fight.

“We’ll be fine, the door is open so the gas is clearing up already. I got out because,” _Woah Atton, let’s keep those skeletons firmly in their closet,_ “I was closest to the door, and after being trapped in there I knew you’d be in troub-”

“Wait!” Just before they turned the bend of the hallway she yanked him to a stop and looked back. “We have to take her with us.”

“... You want me to drag the person who managed to seriously injure you with us, instead of taking two trips?”

“You want to leave the person who managed to incapacitate my entire crew and almost me _unsupervised_, even for a single second?”

“Uh.” He blinked. He had expected a painfully sympathetic response, a rational one. “Oh alright, I hear you, lean on the wall for a second-”


End file.
